okayplayer.com brings the rare $h*t once again! Check out the 1st installment of Common giving us direct insight of 'Electric Circus'... song by song. If you have the album, we can dig deeper... if you don't have it yet, Common puts the album in perspective for you too.
Check for him at these links as he hangs out on B.Kyle Korner ONLY at okayplayer.com! ! !

Here he gets into the songs 'FERRIS WHEEL', and 'SOUL POWER'.

LOW SPEED:
http://www.okayplayer.com/real/common/com_on_EC_lo.ram
HI SPEED:
http://www.okayplayer.com/real/common/com_on_EC_hi.ram

****** JUST ADDED *************************************

Common get's into 'AQUARIUS' and 'ELECTRIC WIRE HUSTLE FLOWER'!!!

LOW SPEED:
http://www.okayplayer.com/real/common/com_on_EC2_lo.ram

HIGH SPEED:
http://www.okayplayer.com/real/common/com_on_EC2_hi.ram

These are all AUDIO ONLY... stay close for more later.

B.Kyle

thanx.

thanks B and Com :)

i am music....

and "new wave"...(that's my track) i cant get enough of that song....


whew!

:)

>and "new wave"...(that's my track) i cant get enough of that
>song....

Me neither!!!! :)

please?

... an OKP does one, that'd be GREAT!!! We'd place it on the site w/ the quickness. To do that is a toughie, though. A few folks could agree to do certain ones... that'd be much easier.

B.Kyle

get Common to do it
don't these artists have plenty of time up their sleeves?

good insight! please keep this type of ish coming.THANKS!!!!

EXCLUSIVE!!!....
COMMON SENSE!!!...
BEHIND THE MUSIC Y'ALL....!!!!

"Now what the fuck just happened?"

damn...i was hopin for an explanation of the Ja Rule diss in Soul Power.

What Ja Rule dis...?

"had a hit came upon a few dollas
id rather hear silence then you 'holla'
stole your persona from the late that made dear momma"

why you wanna be startin something?!

lol. playing. but for real? same thing could be said about DMX, really, or alot of similar DMX/Ja Rule style knock offs.

common really has never straight dissed anyone, and when he did, he was real explicit with it (called ice cube "ho shea" making fun of his government name "o'shea"). real explicit.

i'm thinking its just battle style, like dooinit or cold blooded. just dissing that omnipresent jiggy emcee that everyone likes to diss and battle, though for some reason, he never shows up. lol

somehow i doubt that. i know that on these boards cats get diss happy..."dude said "you thought" in a verse, he must be dissing BT!"

but there are too many references in that verse for it not to be.

although i still dont know what the hell he is talking about with that prayer to who?

n/m

>although i still dont know what the hell he is talking about
>with that prayer to who?


He sounds really really high.

>He sounds really really high.
lol, yea

------------------------------
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."
===
"How about if I wait six weeks to call. I could tell her I found her number while I was cleaning out my wallet, I can't remember where we met. I'll ask her what she looks like and then I'll ask her if we fucked. How about that? Would that be money? "
===
"Are you wishing on a star
Did you know your dreams are sold
To People who dream only of gold"
The Appleseed Cast - Steps and Numbers
===
la rotation:
- 3eb : Live at House of Blues, Las Vegas (9/2/00)
- Beck : Sea Change
- 9th Wonder invented the remix
- Charlie Haden & Pat Metheny : Beyond the Missouri Sky
-----------------------------

Thanks Common for an opportunity to teach........

He's talking about the Orisha Oggun from the Yourba religion.

He is the 'warrior' Orisha. Oggun lives in the forest, and is a blacksmith. The domain of Oggun is work and
tools of labor made of iron. Oggun is always working and maintains ownership of the heart, as it is the muscle/organ which
never rests. He is a fierce warrior.

Orion

Word... I can understand ppl not knowing who he was talkin about, but why he gotta sound high just cuz he's talking about Yoruba gods?

I can't open this and am interested in Com's verbal tour. Can anyone provide a transcript, or a suggestion for getting to the file. My computer just tells me that this is not a Real Audio file.
Thanks in advance.
Peace.

this is hot.....got me wanting to listen to the album all over again!! Not to mention that Ferris Wheel is my favorite song.

>Not to mention that Ferris Wheel is my favorite
>song.

please, please, please.

if ferris wheel is your favorite song on electric circus, you got a TON of explaining to do.

that shit is 2 minutes long, and is just an intro to the album.

soul power, #10, and aquarius would be its only comp for me

thanks com and b for bringing the insight behind the cd. much love to common and the bridge that he his building in music. thanks for sharing yourself...your soul...your music and your experiences.

No doubt.. and I can't wait to hear what you have to say about Star 69... LoL
"My bad.. I just hit redial..." hahahha.. that's my shit!!

[]

i cant see it on this computer.
is this the infamous first time we heard "soul power"?

--y'know "my name's common sense, i burn incense...my name's common sense i burn insense..."

help Bkyle HELP!

>i cant see it on this computer.

It's an AUDIO jawn. No video on this one. Makin folks concentrate on the words. Folks get distracted w/ his gear and don't embrace what he says. Gettin' catz to FOCUS, man.

>is this the infamous first time we heard "soul power"?

Naw... but THAT extended version is gonna be on the DVD. Feb 11th BABY!!

B.Kyle

ehhh

just in time for the birthday

help me out please

gonna be released for different zones?

*crossing fingers*

... that's up to MCA/Universal tech-folks.

My work is done. =)

Brian Kyle A.

godammit- i REALLY need a multi-zone

*looks at unwatched Roots DVD sadly*

please dont tell me that was part of the song? the incense thing?

>please dont tell me that was part of the song? the incense
>thing?

it was a studio joke

Thanks, Comm, for helpin'
to keep Hip Hop on life
support.

hahaha. yeah.

i'm not a big fan of the album, but it was good to know some of where he was coming from on it.

- - - - -

peace & love

Can we expect Com to make any Com-ments about the interludes that appear throughout the album?

ahhh...he didn't talk about the jay dee intro into "the hustle". man i listen to that hole song just to hear that one snippet.

I agree ... I'll put on Hustle but rewind it thru the intro just cause it's the most perfect intro to a song I've ever heard.

I'm glad to see I'm not the only one who does that (constantly rewinds "Hustle" just to hear the intro)! Com and the Soulquarians seem to put a lot of thought and effort into the intros, especially on EC and LWFC. I'm interested in learining about the influences and/or what they were listening to when they created them.

I just want to know why they didnt let that one go longer than what it was.

I will check on the exclusive later. Peace.

electric wire hustle flower is a cornyass phrase for such great music. the album is incredible, but that line is corny as hell.

but some people take their art very personally. now we know common is like that. which makes the personal nature of the music more appropriate.

i'm always surprised to see people who see their art mostly in terms of self expression do well. because that "whether it works or not, it's the way i wrote it" attitude usually accompanies art that has very little editting and rearranging and tweaking and polishing and.................

maybe that's summa teh struggle between artists and practical minded people-

it would have been an erroneous physics equation. but acccording to common it becomes a metaphysical cycle

electic wire = energy

hustle = work (gritty raw work in particular)

flower = beauty

energy or being energized (inspired) leads to the capacity to put in work in a struggle towards beauty. beauty of course creates further energizing/inspiration and it is through this cycle that we grow on as human beings. actually this cycle is appears elsewhere too. the artists struggle to create something original that expresses his individual statement. even the refining of government. think of all the struggle that has taken place and continues to take place just in an attempt to realize the beauty of the words written in the constituion. there always has to be some struggle that we must have the momentum to make it through, but on the other side of that struggle is always something beautiful.

i am sure some will say i am reaching, but that is because these are the same people who are only comfortable if they can agree with everyone else on what a song is about, what a particular movie meant, or what definitive statement is being made in any other form of expression. just as we all look at god and see a different abstraction, the same can happen with music. i have to say i like flower more than power as that last word because power would have made the hook sound like some call to arms or political rally...but instead the song is more or less about the circle of life, about the creation of art itself.

i would rather hear a theme I have never heard before in music or an original take on an old theme than be hit over the head with the same stuff...but it is only the same stuff that people recognize. but the days when the average listener of hip was fifteen and needed clear cut songs that make clear cut statements are all but over. i think there is too much of a desire for heads to like definitive themes in their music, as it is easier to put that song in a box. we all know what "brenda's got a baby" is about and when hip hop was in its adolescence it made sense that hip hop would stick to expressing rather familiar themes in its own voice...but as hip hop matures into adulthood it appears to have a choice...the road more or less travelled. i know everyone isn't ready but fuck everyone else because i am.

BTW, they are using Common's album to do the interludes between news segments on NPR.

h20
-------------------------------------------------
if hip hop ever dies...it will be the day that all of us who fell in love with a new sound that was like nothing we ever heard before and kept being amazed as it grew and changed and morphed stop wanting to be challenged...it will be the day we make a bunch of unbreakable rules and accept it all as hip hop cannon, and the next musical form will have to born of a rebellion against all you reactionaries who wouldn't let it grow and change because your "love" was really obsession and you held on so tight that you choked her. it will be the day that young kids don't want to hear about hip hop anymore because they still listen with their hearts...in reality hip hop won't really be dead anyway, she will just have to undergo another name change like she always has...word to miles and dizzy. - kacy wilson

nice look

Still makes no damn sense.
Ramble on.

Bkyle: What’s up OkayPlayers?! This is your boy Bkyle, and we sittin’ in with our boy, Common, OkayPlayer style. He’s about to break it down for us and tell us about this whole journey into Electric Circus. C’mon man, let’s get into the flow.

Common: It’s a beautiful experience; we’re on the flow. And we want to get into my album and we wanna let y’all know what ‘Electric Circus’ came from - what we were thinking when we did this journey, when we took this journey. This album, ‘Electric Circus,’ when we began it, it began in 2001, in January. And our plan, our plot was to make some music that was free, some music that was pushing the sky, that was pushing the envelope of what we expect hip-hop to be, and what we expect Black music to be. I joined with ?uestlove of The Roots, James Poyser, Jay Dee, Pino Palladino, who plays bass, and Jeff Lee Johnson, the guitarist. That was the core producers of the album. The album is also produced by - the Neptunes did two songs on it, and this brother Karriem Riggins.

(‘Ferris Wheel’ begins to play in the background) The first track on the album is called ‘Ferris Wheel.’ And we began this track with a prayer, and this prayer is done by Vinia Mojica. It’s a prayer to one of the Orishas, one of the Orishas she’s…the prayer is really, it’s like inducing the album, it’s like an invocation to the album, saying we paying homage to this Orisha. This Orisha we go to is named Oggun. And Oggun is about, is about war, he’s also – in the prayer that we say – it’s about freedom. And Vinia Mojica is on the song, along with this sistah Marie from Zap Mama. And basically the…what we tried to create was just a, a song that was like letting you know ‘we’re about to take you out there, we’re about to take you to another place,’ but, we wanted the prayer to still be the core essence of the vocals of the song. And the prayer is really, it’s basically that journey and that trip to let you know we’re about to go somewhere.

Bkyle: Right, right. I’ll tell you what, this’ll take OkayPlayer somewhere right now and talk about this next song on the album, which happens to be one of my favorites. (‘Soul Power’ begins to play in the background)

Common: The next song on the album is called ‘Soul Power.’ And ‘Soul Power’ at this point, we produced this song in January of 2002. And I went to Jay Dee, this song is produced by Jay Dee, I went to his home and was like ‘Jay, we need some raw stuff now.’ ‘Cause we did a lot of the live musical pieces on the album, and this piece, I was in his basement and I was like ‘Jay, we need something raw.’ But I approached this song, and I approached the album by trying to challenge myself and have different rhythms to the music that I did. So what Jay Dee did was program the drums with a sound that was very different. The drums are like, they feel double-time (drums begin to play in the background) they go boom-bap, boom-bap. And I, I had to, when I heard the music, I was like yes, it’s so rugged, but at the same time it was, it was going somewhere else, you know, basically because of the rhythm. And it challenged me as an emcee. This song came out to be so powerful because he had those cuts already, and I just felt like just rhyming, man. The beat just made me feel like, just rhyme the way you know how to rhyme, and rhyme rugged and rhyme with different kind of rhythm, the way the music was going.

(‘Soul Power’ plays out the end of this part of the interview)


Transcript of Pt. II coming later today

What I don't get is all these prayers to Orisha's on this album and LWFC Com starts off with these incantations but he's supposed to be a devout Muslim

but also to pay homage to others

hes not anything. just worships god.....

well look at you
nice job :D

insominia will drive you to do strange things

much appreciated

But they are no comparison the Cort-Bort :)

Awwwwwweee!!!!

I gotta get my sig on BLAZE-MODE! Phoenix Blaze that is.

=)

My niece is the cutest!

B.

Common: Now, another piece on the album I wanna talk about is a song called ‘Aquarius.’ Now ‘Aquarius’ is the last song that we did on the album. We got together in Philly; it was Jay Dee, Pino, ?uestlove and James Poyser and Jeff Lee Johnson. And, we were down to the - we was trying to think of some music that would be pushing it and would be a great addition to the album, and we came up with ‘Aquarius.’ When we came up with it, I heard the music and I was like ‘I’ma call this song Aquarius,’ because of the SoulQuarian team. And also, we’re dealing with the Age of Aquarius right now; we’re living in the Age of Aquarius, where we know a lot of…we’re dealing with a lot of believing and knowing, and a lot of emotion. And the Age of Aquarius is supposed to be the time when we come to believe and know what’s going on. And I just felt like, that music made me feel like it was encompassing us, (the) whole SoulQuarian vibe of pushing the envelope and taking our music somewhere else. And I kept the rhymes a little rugged talking about different things, and once I put the vocals to it – my vocals to it – I called Erykah and told her about the song. And, I said, ‘Yo E, we need some type of hippy chorus.’ And Erykah and I have been really listening to a lot of like, the Mom and Papas, and like you know, Joni Mitchell, and a lot of the, you know – that hippy music. So, so she was in, she was overseas at the time and she started humming this, this, um, melody. I told her the song was called ‘Aquarius.’ So she…I was at the airport at the time walking through to the terminal, and she came (was) like, she starting saying ‘the water bearer comes, to purify the world, watch it flying through the night, so watch out here it comes, Aquarius.’ She was basically paying homage to Aquarius in the chorus. We made it real hippy sounding, and the song you know, had a certain rhyme to it. Rugged rhymes, the music is out there, and the chorus is hippy. It all came together just to be the piece, ‘Aquarius.’

Bkyle: Yeah, so um, all right, well what you wanna uh, what song can we get into next? What’s the next song on the album?

Common: Another song on the album that we can get into…

Bkyle: Look at the paper right there.

Common: It’s the fourth piece on the album; it’s called ‘Electric Wire, Hustle Flower.’ (‘Electric Wire, Hustle Flower’ begins to play in the background) Now this song, I gave it that title because once we created the music – Jay Dee and James Poyser, um, created the music – I felt like it was a rock kind of song, but it still had a hip-hop soul to it. And for some reason, the first thing that came to mind was ‘electric wire,’ and that was describing the energy, uh, that I was feeling from the music, like electric wire, like just – high energy. The ‘Hustle’ of it was for me bringing the element of, of street to it, and not just street, but, but a little ghetto. And the soul of it, when I think about ‘hustle’ I think of people striving to do better, and just, the, the umm, the process that we go to achieve – the struggle. When I think about ‘hustle’ that’s what that was for me. ‘Flower’ was the beauty of it, so I just, when I thought of that – the thought of that title and that chorus, I just was like, ‘I’m not changing it, this is what it is.’ Many times Ahmir, ?uestlove, asked me, ‘Man, why do you keep saying ‘flower?’ Change it to ‘power’ or something.’ And I was like, ‘no, I’m using this ‘Electric Wire, Hustle Flower.’ You know, cause all those elements was what the music made me feel, the, the high energy, the struggle and the beauty…flowers, flowers are beautiful to me.

I wrote my rhyme just, charged! I was in the studio doing a rhyme and I was like, I did the first verse and I was tired after that. I was like, I told the engineer to stop for a minute, I had to take a breath cause it was like…I wasn’t used to, to really rhyming with that energy, like with that much charge. I was thinking about, ‘how am I gonna do this in a show?’ Then we perform, and we performing it now in a show, and I be tired after that song. (laughs) But um, ‘Electric Wire, Hustle’ is about, it’s just really about energy, really…uncontained energy.

the chorus of ‘Electric Wire, Hustle Flower’ song plays out this part of the interview)

Very good, I don't think i could have done that no matter how many times i listened to it.

Good lookin' out. THANKS !

Good looking.....
B. Kyle....Comm..thanx for sharing

.

where's pt 3?

and when's BKyle gonna get his own radio show?

Ok that's 4 songs. 9 left; when's the next update?

I love shit like this.. Com letting us know how EC was put together, and what each song breaks down to for him... good shit.


FiSh

when are the other ones coming out


"u ain't hard cause u can kill in a song, hard is being a man, admitting u were wrong." -blueprint

"have you ever thought that everytime u listen to a track, that's 4 minutes of your life that you can never get back?"
-brother ali

"life's not a bitch, life is a beautiful woman, you only call her a bitch cause she wouldn't let u get that pussy."
-aesop rock

"sometimes, before u smile u got to cry, you need a heart that's filled with music, if u use it u can fly."
-black thought

WHO IS COMMON DISSIN IN THE SONG SOUL POWER AND WHY?

"If a white police officer had a black dick would he still beat it?" --> Ababa

*********************************************************
Recommended reading:

******Parable of the Sower- by Octavia Butler*******
Story about a hyper-empath who becomes the founder of a cult created to transform the destiny of humankind

******The spirit of Terrorism- Jean Baudrillard*******
A MUST read for every thinking being
online copy @
http://awake.sparklehouse.com/downloads/papers/baud_terr.html